Traditionally, physiological monitoring could only be performed in the clinic, hospital, or laboratory using monitoring equipment that was often not portable and could even be invasive. As a consequence, physiological monitoring was limited and the resulting data generally available only to trained personnel. Consequently, physiological data displays were designed primarily for such personnel.
However, advances in physiological monitoring now permit the monitoring of persons in a wide range of environments. For example, it is now possible to obtain cardiopulmonary data in real time using non-invasive sensors and lightweight monitoring devices from unrestrained, ambulatory persons going about their normal activities. An example of an ambulatory monitoring system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,551,252 B1, issued Apr. 23, 2003. This patent describes systems and methods that use comfortable garments as platforms for sensors of multiple physiological parameters. Sensor data can be processed at the monitored person or transmitted or stored for remote processing.
Although physiological monitoring data is now more available, even to persons without training, physiological data displays are still often designed, as they were in the past, for trained personnel. Such displays, however, can be difficult for non-trained persons. Their access to physiological monitoring data is thereby limited and new applications for such data are hindered.
A number of references are cited herein, the entire disclosures of which are incorporated herein, in their entirety, by reference for all purposes. Further, none of these references, regardless of how characterized above, is admitted as prior to the invention of the subject matter claimed herein.